I ran a small workshop for Year 5 at Burford Primary School in Nottingham a week ago and found it very rewarding. The reward of which I write is not the beer they gave me as thanks for my efforts but rather the simply incredible level of engagement of the whole class.

We began the day with a discussion about what is cool about the Vikings (my answer would be ‘everything’), looking at how far they travelled and the ships they used, before turning to Viking-related things closer to home like place names and English words that derive from Old Norse. Then we looked at how we know about the Vikings, what their daily lives would have been like and the stories they told. Viking riddles were told and answered, notes were written home to the children’s parents in runes and many questions were asked and answered . I was particularly taken with the question about why the Vikings fought the Anglo-Saxons: “Did they fight because they could not understand each other?”

We concluded the day by forming up in shieldwall and chanting “Odin” in the playground to get the children in character as berserkers while banging on their (imaginary) shields with their (imaginary) weapons. Note to self: I need a large stock of foam shields and swords! There was some shield-biting but no foaming at the mouth fortunately. I hope that the children are all suitably enthused about Vikings now and I look forward to hearing that they have pursued this interest further in the future.

My thanks go to Year 5 and to Ms Chapleo for being so good to work with. Your enthusiasm has really enthused me further. Oh, and the beer is a pretty good reward on top of the children’s enthusiasm, and it is very much appreciated!

Not my movie review, I should add. When I came across this movie review for Berserker: Hell’s Warrior, I realised how deeply it cut to the core of the movie and realised that I had not reviewed it yet. I felt that I could not better the review, so I shall not write my own version now. Therefore, here is the link to the review on Dungeons and D-Listers.

For me, Berserker: Hell’s Warrior is like a Viking Age Highlander with vampiric Valkyries and dirty, smelly, half-naked berserkers using dustbin lids as shields because the props department ran out of proper shields. The plot makes little sense and things happen because the director or editor or producer or somebody thought they would be cool. I could go on, but Alex Wolfe really does it so much better. Go! Read the review. The film really is that bad. And yet I enjoyed it. Maybe it’s the sparkly-ass vampires, umm, I mean, Valkyries. Something in me must be broken …

This is a slightly modified and shortened extract from a paper I gave at the Unlocking the Vikings 2014 conference.

One question I am almost invariably asked when I mention my thesis topic to people is, “How did berserkers go berserk?” People are fascinated by berserker pharmacology, berserker psychology and berserker physiology. Most commonly they want to know if berserkers really took magic mushrooms. When I inform them that we have no contemporary or literary evidence for the consumption of magic mushrooms as an aid in battle, they often move on to ask if they were just psychologically unbalanced, or had something physically wrong with them (like Paget’s Disease, as Byock has suggested for Egill Skallagrimsson).

There is a problem with this question: it assumes that berserkers actually did go berserk and never questions whether this is really the case. Some examples of warriors going berserk do occur in Old Norse literature. For example, At Vínheiðr, Egill Skallagrimsson’s brother Þórólfr appears to go berserk when he slings his shield on his back and strikes forward into the melee killing all around him as he goes:

‘Þórólfr gerðisk þá svá óðr, at hann kastaði skildinum á bak sér, en tók spjótit tveim höndum; hljóp hann þá fram ok hjó eða lagði til beggja handa; stukku menn þá frá tveggja vegna, en hann drap marga.’ (Thorolf became so enraged that he slung his shield on his back and took his spear in both hands. Then he ran forward and laid about him on both sides. Men all around him ran from him but he killed many), Egils saga, Chapter 53.

Likewise Haraldr harðraði at the Battle of Stamford Bridge appears to go berserk in a passage written in very similar style to that in Egils saga.

The circumstances are similar to those under which modern soldiers have gone berserk, which suggests that the sagas’ authors were familiar with the idea that men might go berserk in battle. However, neither Þórólfr nor Haraldr is ever called a berserker. It is never stated that they undergo berserksgangr, and they do not engage in the activities normally associated with berserkers such as biting their shields or howling. The medieval saga authors did not treat them as berserkers and probably did not consider them to be berserkers.

Berserksgangr (usually translated as ‘berserker fit’ or ‘berserker fury’ although that is a different can of semantic worms that I shall save for another time) is signalled by shield-biting and howling. It usually occurs before a fight or battle and has been construed by most scholars as symptomatic of an altered state of mind: of going berserk. I dispute this, as the examples below show.

In Grettis saga (chapter 40), Snækollr begins biting his shield and howling even before dismounting from his horse, as he readies himself for battle with Grettir, an act that Grettir uses to good advantage. He kicks the base of the shield up into Snækollr’s mouth apparently breaking his jaw and then drags him from the horse and cuts off head. Snækollr was obviously not ready for battle and had certainly not gone berserk.

In Egils saga (chapter 64), the berserker Ljótr inn bleiki (Ljot the Pale) also bites his shield and howls at the start of the fight as he approaches the place for the duel. However, this berserksgangr is not an example of going berserk, because he then pauses to exchange words with Egill before taking a bit more time to get ready for the fight. Then, in the middle of the duel, Ljótr asks for a break, and he and Egill have a rest and a verbal exchange before continuing the fight which ends with the death of Ljótr. A berserk warrior is unlikely to have had the presence of mind to ask for a break.

Finally, to take one last example, the Viking or half-berserker Moldi in Svarfdæla saga (chapter 7) turns up with eleven men to discuss marrying jarl Herröðr’s daughter in a variant of the berserk suitor motif that Blaney identified as the most common usage of berserkers in sagas. He and his men enter the hall, wade through the fire and bite their shields. Then, instead of attacking in a frenzy as one might expect from the shield-biting motif, Moldi greets the jarl well and is invited to take a seat. Moldi’s suit does not end well, because he is killed in a duel as a result of the exchange regarding the jarl’s daughter, but he had certainly not gone berserk when he entered the hall, because he was sufficiently in control to stop and have a chat.

These examples show that the authors of these sagas did not consider berserkers to have lost all control. Given that berserksgangr only occurs at the start of combat, and not during the battle, it seems likely that the shield-biting and howling that are part of it were a form of posturing intended to help the berserker motivate himself for battle, while also intimidating his foes. One might compare it to the haka performed by the All Blacks before a rugby match which has all the hallmarks of berserksgangr with grimacing and posturing to put the opponents off while building team spirit and morale.

So, to answer the question in the title, berserkers in Old Norse literature did not generally go berserk. By extension, I would suggest that Viking berserkers did not go berserk either. Those elements of their activities that are remembered in Old Norse literature do not indicate a berserk state. Going berserk is likely to have been more of a hindrance than a help in a period when warfare relied upon maintaining an unbroken wall of shields. It is entirely possible, if not probable, that some warriors went berserk in any army of the period (not just Viking armies), because of the stress of warfare, but the evidence does not support habitual berserk states for Viking berserkers.

I just came across this film today which led to this blog post about it. If you scroll down a bit, there is a link to the whole film on Youtube. I plan to watch it soon, but loved the tone of this post from Gonzo History and wanted to share it.

This week’s film is kind of an oddity. It’s silent — one of the last big silent films — but it’s in colour. In fact, just as it was one of the last big silent films, it was one of the first big colour films, widely considered at the time to be one of the best uses of the Technicolour process. As we’ll see, it looks pretty good!

Well, OK, maybe not good per se.

Anyway, it’s an adaptation of a 1902 novel, the which you can find on Gutenburg and which I have also put on my Kindle but not read yet. The novel is in turn sort of based on The Saga of Erik the Redand The Saga of the Greenlanders. Sort of.

Ready? Here we go.

Our story begins with a little casual … not racism as such, but a little reminder that 1928…

This film uses the allure of the Viking to entice unwitting history buffs into watching it. Like Hammer of the Gods before it, it has nothing to do with real history and really belongs in the realm of fantasy. The Norsery is purely skin deep and provides little beyond some names and a plot. The film even lacks the momentum of Hammer of the Gods, so watching becomes tedious and the concentration wavers. I’m sure the answer to my question about freeing the giants was in there somewhere but I must have lost focus and missed that bit. I’m not sure I care enough about the film to watch it again to find out.

So, having let this post languish for ages, in a fit of mental sogginess I watched this film again today. I now understand. Thor wants to punish humanity for forsaking the old gods and wants to rule the earth. That makes sense then. What about the film though? Visually it felt like watching a computer game with grainy metallic colours throughout. The dialogue was quite wooden. There is lots of action and macho posturing. There’s lots of carnage in slow motion, if you like that sort of thing. You don’t have to think too hard about it all. In fact, I would recommend not thinking about it at all if you watch it. Just enjoy the ride and accept it for what it is: a cheaply made Viking movie with poor special effects. This is totally B-movie territory. It’s not quite in ‘so bad it’s good’ territory, but some might consider it so. Interestingly, I find myself slightly less negative about it now that I have watched it a second time. I wonder if that is because my expectations were suitably lowered.

Today is the Norwegian Constitution Day (Nasjonaldagen or Grunnlovsdagen). It is a national holiday in Norway and is marked with parades, national dress wearing and flag waving. I remember it being particularly fun back in the eighties when I lived in Norway. Today’s 17th May celebration is the bicentenary of the signing of the constitution at Eidsvoll. This act marked the start of the route to independence for Norway. It had originally been a separate country and Viqueen has a virtual 17th May parade with the legendary founder of Norway on her blog. However, Norway and Sweden became part of Denmark with the Kalmar Union of 1397, which was a response to increasing commercial pressure from the south. Sweden gained its independence again in 1523, but Norway had to wait nearly another 400 years. Due to bad choices made by Denmark in the Napoleonic Wars, Norway joined a union with Sweden later in 1814 and it did not gain full independence until 1905, but 1814 marked the start of that road.

Roberta Frank has shown how the ‘traditional’ horned helmet came to be associated with the Vikings. Carl Doepler was the costume designer for Wagner’s first Bayreuth production of Ring des Nibelungen in 1876, and he created a simple horned helmet for the production. The fate of the horned helmet was sealed. Where previously it had been the preserve of the Ancient Briton or Gaul, now it was firmly associated with the Viking brand in the popular consciousness. Nowadays we know better. Vikings did not have horns on their helmets. Nevertheless, Vikings are still depicted as wearing horned helmets in many places, especially in advertising, as a quick trawl of Google for Viking-related business names shows. It is an immediately recognisable brand that can be used for a range of products to indicate various attributes of that product. I do struggle to understand the reasoning behind Viking Scaffolding, but Viking River Cruises and Viking Taxis do make some sense.

Archaeology does not support this horned image either. No Viking Age helmets have been found that feature horns. However, I have another theory that leads me to believe that Doepler may have had greater knowledge of Viking headgear than is generally credited. It occurred to me that Vikings fought a lot. Fighting is a thirsty business and requires a Viking to carry a lot of gear. He has axes, swords, spears, knives, shields and armour to carry with him when he goes to war, so a Viking must have had his hands full. We know that Vikings drank from horns, so it occurs to me that they must have taken those horns with them too. With all that war-gear to carry the Vikings had their hands full, but they were not stupid. Clearly they must have found a way to affix horns full of mead to their helmets, leaving their hands free for the important stuff like big axes and swords and spears. Presumably they would detach the horns, drink the ale or mead, and discard them before battle, which is why no helmets with horns have been found. And that is how the Vikings invented the beer hat.

Now all I need is a research grant to look for horn middens near Viking Age battlefields.